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| Cyber |
| Hackers target US FEC system, disrupting campaign finance disclosures days before midterms |
| 2026-10-28 |
| [Reuters] The US Federal Election Commission's website was targeted by a hacker or hackers, according to an email seen by Reuters, disrupting the agency's electronic filings system a week before the November 3 elections. The hack comes as so-called super PACs and dark money groups spend record sums in the final days of the races. The elections will determine whether President Donald Trump's Republicans maintain their majorities in Congress for the next two years. In a statement, the FEC said, "At this time, the FEC's electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service." The FEC, which tracks the spending of candidates and political committees, said users could still search the website for past reports. A status message posted by the FEC said its filing system had been down since around 10 p.m. ET on Monday (0200 GMT Tuesday). Around 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday (0000 GMT Wednesday), a new status message said the issue "has been identified and a fix is being implemented." The FEC did not immediately return a message seeking comment and a notice on its website said its filing system remained offline. The FEC does not play a role in administering US elections and the outage should have no effect on voters' ability to cast ballots. The outage does prevent organizations from filing the FEC's 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which show how much political groups and others are spending on specific races. "I've never seen this in 26 years," said Steven Mele, president and CEO at political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group. The FEC posted the notice to its website after campaign finance officers could not file mandatory reports late on Monday. "We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result, we’ve had to temporarily shut down our web facing services," an FEC electronic filings officer said in the email to several campaign compliance firms that night. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI both referred questions to the FEC. Related: Hacker 10/27/2026 How one hacker used AI agents and a few thousand dollars to break into scores of sites Hacker 10/24/2026 Amish woman uses weed whacker to scare off illegal migrant allegedly threatening to kidnap her at knifepoint Hacker 10/24/2026 AI-discovered bugs may soon trigger fresh disruptions, cyber experts say |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
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| Posted by: Difar Dave 2026-10-28 13:42 |
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| Posted by: NN2N1 2026-10-28 06:53 |
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| Posted by: Skidmark 2026-10-28 06:43 |